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Our Story

About Essentially Tamara

About us

My name is Tamara and I am the owner and founder of Essentially Tamara which is based in Silverdale. We pride ourselves on making a beautiful, premium and environmentally friendly product called a shower bomb. Our shower bombs provide a way for every person to turn their routine shower time into a ritual of self-care that you can look forward to daily. Just knowing that you are going to have those 10 minutes of time to yourself, surrounded by the steamy warmth of the shower and the beautiful fragrances, is something really lovely to look forward to when our days and lives are so hectic.

I was a midwife before this and gave up my career to look after my child who was unable to integrate into mainstream school. From working all my adult life to being a stay-at-home mum was a very difficult transition for me as well as coping with the stress of knowing my child was struggling with life. This situation put a great deal of strain on my mental wellness, and I was constantly searching for some form of release.

I am by nature a very creative person and as a way of coping I would often look on the internet for inspiration on things to make at home with the children. On one such occasion I was scrolling through Pinterest looking for a bath bomb recipe to make with my young daughter when I came across a post on how to make a 'shower steamer', something I had not previously heard of. I was immediately grabbed by this fantastic idea and followed this home-made recipe to the letter. It was a total flop, but the idea was born...

Where it all began to where we are now

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Where it all began

My creativity ran wild, and my excitement grew as I set about on my new journey from home. No longer did the bath need to be the focal point of luxury and relaxation in the bathroom. I wanted to turn the normal, boring shower experience into something wonderful, something to be looked forward to and enjoyed.

Two years on from this and many, many attempts at creating our now beautiful and perfectly hand-crafted shower bombs, Essentially Tamara was founded in May 2019.

From that point, we have perfected our shower bomb and shower burst recipes and continually strive to create more beautiful and unique shower bomb products with a richness and intensity of experience.

It has been such an exciting journey to watch the popularity of our products grow, with stockists throughout New Zealand making repeat orders along with many online customers returning to buy more. From little acorns...

I am so proud of what we have created and as such, naming our brand was really easy.

We have now moved from the humble beginnings of working from my repurposed garage at home to now having our own premises and a fantastic team of awesome ladies who put so much love and care into every shower bomb we make.

Where we are now

As a company we pride ourselves on being a socially responsible employer. The typical profile of our employees are mothers with young children at school who are looking to generate an income.

Unfortunately, the responsibility of childcare and family commitments make it incredibly difficult to secure employment that works around their schedules. We take great pride in being able to offer this to our ladies and believe that we play a part in facilitating their sentiment of being contributing members of society.

It was always my intension to make sure that all our products are vegan-friendly and completely cruelty free. They do not and never will contain contain any animal derived products.

Taking care of our planet is really important to us. We try as much as possible only to use recyclable or biodegradable materials. All our products are safe for the environment, without exception. Our products are free of parabens, sulphates, and phthalates.

Simply due to the nature of the ingredients needed to make shower bombs, they do need to be packaged in plastic to protect them from moisture. However, the plastic that we use is biodegradable which means that 3-5 years of being in landfill conditions, the plastic will completely biodegrade without leaving any trace of the original polymer components which were used to make the plastic in the first place.

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